it's interesting to hear boehner saying, listen, nowhere, period. nowhere. which sounded very final and very bloomy. earlier when i was talking to senator blumenthal, he was like, i'm optimistic. i'm kind of hopeful. what do you think? >> i think first of all the timing of this probably couldn't be worse for negotiation purposes from our perspective to some degree. right before the holidays, which is a tough time for politicians anyway. in some terms we feel like it's light years between now and the new year. it's really not. it's right around the corner. lawmakers will continue to feel a lot more pressure between now and then to get something done. at the same time we're coming off the heels of this election. to some degree we're kind of trying to find our negotiating legs, if you will. nonetheless, it's critically important. i think it's critically important we say to the american people that we get the fiscal house in order. >> how do you do that in realistically 29 days? what do you say? >> let me go back to this. no one should be surprised we are in the